Waaaah…!

Hello everyone. Welcome to the second Spooky Month Writing Contest. I’m your Mascot, Hata no Kokoro… I’m so happy to meet you all.

Welcome everyone. I’m the host for this contest, Gooboi. Last year’s Spooky Month contest was quite a lot of fun, with a nice variety of entries. I always hoped I might be able to make it a yearly thing; so here we are again, giving it another round.

I’m taking over from Kogasa this year. Halloween… it’s really fun, isn’t it? It’s a time of fear, and joy, and so many others… every emotion I can think of, and more! I joined because I wanted all the feelings you could put into your stories.

Indeed, there’s few times better than halloween to run the full gamut of emotions and experiences. From the horror of the unknown to the simple joys of getting and eating candy… Halloween has it all.

THEME

This year, I spoke to a few members of the audience to get their opinions. And they chose from a small list of options I provided. Kokoro, would you do the honours?

This years theme is… Harvest Fest. So it’s festivals this time? Mamizou took me to one of those last year, in the Human Village - wait.

Is something wrong, Kokoro?

…Wasn’t last year’s theme about masks?

It was, but we’re gonna mix it up every year.

…Then why was Kogasa the host that year? Why not me?

I just couldn’t imagine starting a spooky month contest without her as the host, you know? …Don’t look at me like that.

A-anyway, this contest has two main themes, both themed around fall. One is the idea of Harvesting - both in the literal sense of gathering crops, but the fruits of one labour can be far more metaphorical. In the most abstract sense, even ‘reaping what you’ve sown’ could be considered harvesting.

...And the other theme is Festivals. Celebrations of all kinds, people congregating and reuniting, and all the fun that can happen in and around them. Festival masks, contests, performances, games, dances, festival masks, fireworks, rare and yummy food… As long as it’s related to festivals, you can bring in anything you imagine.

Including festival masks. If you wanted to.

CONTEST RULES AND PRIZES

Once again, the contest is going to run throughout October. Submissions will open with a new Shorts thread on the 28th, and continue until the end of the month. After that, voting will proceed for about a week.

You get one story, one vote. No more, so take your time with both, okay? Trust your heart, and do what feels right. Gooboi will not be writing or voting - however, if you want a proofreader, he can help with that.

Please submit your stories anonymously. You can claim credit for them and post them later, but putting stories in anonymously stops this from turning into a popularity contest.

As for the prizes?
- For the winner, I will pen a short starring a character of your choice, with a scenario you propose fitting within the boundaries of the themes. Negotiation is expected.
- If there’s five or more entries, Second and third place will get a joint prize. Each of them will be allowed to propose one character, or specific sub-theme, and they will get a combined short featuring both proposals. No prize for fourth place this time, it was stressful enough doing this last year with three suggestions.

Kogasa told me you took a really really long time to write them last year…

B-but they came out in the end, didn’t they?

QUESTIONS

Now it’s time for Questions and Answers!

If this is a Halloween Contest, does that mean we have to write Horror?

All emotions are equally important! Just because it’s timed for halloween doesn’t mean that it needs to be scary. I want to see everything you have to offer…!

This applies to interpreting the themes as well. It does not have to be Halloween or even fall themed - make it about anything or everything you like. The only condition is that it relates to at least one of the themes.

How long should I make my piece? Is there a lower or upper limit?

There’s no rules on size. Big stories and small stories are both good! But make sure you can finish it - stories that don’t reach their end are always sad.

A decent rule of thumb is Two Full Posts as a soft cap - that's 60000 characters. That’s only a suggestion, though - last year’s winner actually exceeded that and still won, though they ended up running late. And there’s no hard word or character minimum, either... if you missed the Flash Fic expo from earlier this year, maybe now’s your chance to sneak in an extra attempt. Even a poem can work!

So you can run late and still submit an entry?

WITH ENOUGH NOTICE, yes. If you know that you’re going to overshoot the deadline, drop a message here ASAP and let me know you’ll need more time.

Give us a whole day to spot it at least, okay? More, if you can - the Crown Prince always says that the sooner you know about a problem, the sooner you can fix it.

When you say you’re open to proofreading, what specifically do you mean?

Getting story advice from the contest creator does feel like it might be cheating…

Well, it’s mostly just spelling/punctuation/grammar. I can discuss your story’s premise or how it relates to the theme, but keep in mind that I’m not voting - don’t listen too close to me on the comments about subjective matters when my tastes don’t factor into the final vote. And logic and writing changes are too much, I won’t cover those, to be fair. I’ll be on THP's Discord channel if you wanna discuss anything, and you can find a bunch of other proofreaders there as well, without my conflicts of interest.

Just make sure to say you’re looking for writing help. It’s best to be polite, and he might not know why you’re messaging him if you don’t.

Write, write, and write some more! We’ll be cheering you on, so make sure to have a good time!

Lets see what you all have for me and the Mask-ot this year. Best of luck…

And may the best story win!